


Where Angels Fear To Tread

by altmodes



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Monster Hunters, Cryptozoology, Dark Comedy, Gen, Horror, Monsters, Other, Vore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 02:50:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8083825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altmodes/pseuds/altmodes
Summary: "For fools rush in where angels fear to tread."- Alexander Pope, 1711Rewind, Chromedome, and Nightbeat search for a cryptid in a strange, alien forest. There's almost no visibility. Night is falling. Out there, somewhere in the darkness-- something else is with them.Nothing could possibly go wrong.





	

**Author's Note:**

> there was a six-hour destination truth marathon happening and I didn't have any other prompts. anyway I keep describing this as a comedy of errors but with almost-vore so like... understand me
> 
> it's fine. it's fine. I promise

“Primus fucking _valve_ rust--”

“Be _quiet_ \--”

“Something _touched_ my leg!”

“It was _me_ , you--” Rewind grinds the rest of his retort into a muffled groan of irritation, swatting Chromedome’s leg a second time to make his point. There’s a faint clang of metal, not any louder than the noise his conjunx is already making, _not_ that that’s saying much. The ambient organic noise of the forest dripping down around them has quieted noticeably: the noises of the little creeping things out there are all but silent now. Was there silence to begin with? There haven’t been any darting shadows of distant animals or faint cries for a while now.

Rewind says ‘little’, but technically they’re surrounded by megaflora and even megafauna, although it all still seems small, even for him. Maybe it won’t seem so small when they’re face to face with it, though. The trees, at least, are huge, with wood that seems stained dark and roots that snarl across the ground.

“Yeah,” Chromedome says, and Rewind hears him flicking on and off some of his internal dehumidifiers, recalibrating for the weird atmosphere and his nerves. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Rewind’s tone is gentler. He switches to internal radio communications. | _Talk here, though?_ |

| _Right. Right._ |

| _It’s fine, Domey. See any alien species from the treetops yet?_ |

He can almost hear the cycling of Chromedome’s vocalizer as he stifles his huff of laughter. | _Oh, yeah. Saw a couple of cybervores a couple cycles ago sunning through the canopy._ |

| _Wow! I’ll bet you got that on camera, too. It’d be awful if you owed me a refund for all this fancy equipment._ |

Chromedome glances down at him, with no discernible expression except the faint glow of his low-light optical configuration. It’s a calculated neutrality, though, or he’d be trying to hide it more. He thinks it’s funny. | _That’s cold._ |

| _Just professionalism._ |

“Hey.” Nightbeat’s whisper comes from right behind them, and it’s Rewind’s turn to hear a stream of profanity buzz through his head, although at least he doesn’t release it over the radio or air waves: he’s not sure how a mech that size knows how to walk that quietly, even on the moss and decay underfoot.

Rewind taps the side of his head, and Nightbeat follows. | _There’s a system of caves near here, most likely intertwined with the root system of the forest. I’d call it symbiotic but, you know, not much of a life cycle when it comes to minerals. Something big lives in there based on the footprints and disruption in the vegetation I saw near the entrance I found-- it’s just the kind of game trails we were expecting, though._ |

| _What_ isn’t _big here,_ | Chromedome wonders.

| _You think it’s in there?_ | Rewind asks, turning to look at Nightbeat. He’s holding two cameras, technically, but he really gets the emotional immediacy he likes with films using the headcam. The being-in-the-moment. That’s what they pay him for.

(They’re not paying him anything. He’s the one in charge of this whole thing. It’s certainly Chromedome’s idea, and Nightbeat’s more than earned his main cast billing and not just through sheer words per minute, but by the Well of the Allspark they really would have gotten eaten by a cybervore by now if it weren’t for Rewind organizing this cryptid search. And the two before it.)

Nightbeat considers this for two kliks. | _Could be. There’s enough of a food source in the area to support a mega-carnivore, and there are well-worn game trails, but it could be anything-- a water source, maybe, or… some mineral the native life here lacks naturally._ | He waves his hands, devil-may-care. C’est-la-vie. | _If we wanted to prove it we’d have to go inside regardless. You said we didn’t need to bring a drone._ |

Chromedome is silent. Click, click: dehumidifier on, dehumidifier off. Rewind distantly wonders whether these fungal spores in the air will just shut them down eventually, along with whatever other alien pollens are filtering in through the hazy green air. He’s not getting any warning alarms yet. He’s heard horror stories of mechs left on alien worlds, torn inside out not by alien wildlife, but by the microorganisms in the air. Just little plants. Rewind shrugs after a moment: | _Then just follow the trails, right?_ |

Nightbeat holds up a hand. | _Follow the trails and the roots. They’re thickest by the cave openings I saw-- there must be something to feed off of, the number of trees isn’t higher there. The moss is greener, too. Oh, and it’s to the Northwest, besides._ |

This, Rewind thinks, is when the folks in the movies dramatically roll their eyes. He just restrains a sigh. | _Okay. Northwest._ |

The trek gives him a moment to reflect on cinematography, some panning shots over the forest with both cameras. Gray ropes of algae-moss hang from boughs and filter out almost all light. What little there is of the setting sun is burnt pink, flickering here and there as they walk. It’s still. Rewind doesn’t respirate, but the atmosphere here doesn’t feel familiar-- heavy as it settles into his joints and behind his whole faceplate. He wants a decontamination shower on the inside.

And the film quality sucks. Rewind doesn’t even have to check to just _know_. The air is thick like grime on the lenses, wet-powdery, enough to keep them wiping their visors. Every quarter-cycle one of them trips on the snarling roots winding the ground, jerking the cameras. This is going to look like a found footage horror film by the time they make it home.

Rewind feels dizzy from staring at the trampled loam and moss between the nests of roots, bent over with Nightbeat’s shadow hanging over him, when he hears Chromedome’s voice again, sudden and sharp with surprise. “Something moved.”

“What?” Rewind jerks up, and smacks his shoulder on Nightbeat’s chest, bent down beside him. Chromedome is twenty or so meters ahead of them, staring frozen into the gloom. “Are you sure?”

“One of the plants. It just… thrashed.” His voice is quiet, tense. “I don’t see it now.”

“You don’t see it?” Nightbeat’s narrowing his eyes, but with his tone of voice. “Can you describe what you did see?”

“It’s dark,” Chromedome hesitates. “It just…” | _It just.. Moved. In the roots over there. It’s on camera, look._ |

Rewind gets a file uplink, and Nightbeat must, too: He was right about the film quality, smeary and polluted, but the sudden blur of motion in the distance among a network of roots is hard to miss.

“Damn,” he whispers.

None of them move for a moment, surrounded by the stillness of the forest, the quiet; the gold fading into purple-gray the deeper and later they go. And then Nightbeat starts picking his way forward, skirting Chromedome, who follows a moment later. Rewind pans the camera behind them, choosing his footsteps carefully as he takes in the field of view. The terrain is changing here, the roots thicker and soil a different color and texture. The chaotic, tamped-down pathways weaving their way across the ground are starker. There’s a sense of… imminence, of something about to break like a branch underfoot. Rewind feels it, anyway, tense inside him like something overthrottled.

“Did you see that?” Nightbeat’s voice is an interrobang. Sudden, almost delighted.

“Yeah, yeah-- Primus,” Chromedome mutters.

“ _What,_ ” Rewind asks, hopping from root to root in probably dangerously large leaps to catch up with them. He loses his balance a bit on the last jump, trying to slow his momentum, and swings to a halt with a hand on Chromedome’s knee.

“A root,” Nightbeat murmurs. His voice is quiet, but there’s a sparkle to it. “A _root_. Just sliding underground.”

“Oh,” Rewind says. His tone drops: shock? Fear? Anticipation? He’s not sure. He thinks maybe it’s excitement. “ _Oh_.”

“It was so fast. Was what you saw that fast?” Nightbeat is all but whirring, rolling forward and backward on his heels.

“Almost, yeah.”

“Is that a cave?” Rewind interjects. “Past those trees over there-- is that a rock face in the shadows?”

Nightbeat springs forward. _Please don’t die._ He signals from where he’s standing up ahead and it’s not hard to discern his success from the sheer degree of enthusiasm in the gesture. Chromedome glances down at Rewind before he takes a step, and reaches out with an open hand. He gives a flash of his dimmed visor as lets his conjunx’s fingers wrap around his.

The crack in the rock wall is long and jagged, big enough for most of the fauna on the planet to slip through based on Rewind’s prior references of biologists’ surveys and his cross-checking now: average height, weight, girth. If it’s real-- if the myths about this planet’s strange ecosystem and what’s out in these forests are true-- then this is exactly where they would find what they’re looking for.

| _Flashlight._ | Rewind doesn’t have a hand-held thanks to the second camera, but he has a visor beam and low-light settings, although how much good they’ll do in the pitch black of a cave is questionable. It’s a leery prospect. Nightbeat gives a _hrm_ that Rewind doesn’t know how to qualify and cuts his flashlight on-- probably has some kind of wacky custom settings on that visor of his.

Nightbeat goes in first, tucking his body in sideways and slipping into the darkness. After a long few seconds-- a _long_ few, and Rewind starts wondering whether Nightbeat has just wandered off, the curiosity getting the better of him-- a light flicks on from the other side of the hole. A blue hand waves at them. It’s shaking a little.

Chromedome has to angle his body in next, like some kind of three-dimensional puzzle made of rock faces and shoulders and tire treads. It would be funny if Rewind’s nerves weren’t bubbling his tanks like just-off energon. Rewind slips inside in a klik, with just a twist to fit his shoulders.

The feeling that something has changed is as immediate as the shift in the air: at first he thinks it’s just the darkness, but when he cycles on the low-visibility config on his visor, he realizes it’s just that the air is _thick_. Even thicker. He rubs his fingers across his visor and it just smears, sort of a brown-lavender of particulate grime. Chromedome makes a noise of disgust behind him. When he manages to clear his visor, Nightbeat is staring at his fingers with a fascinated expression.

| _It’s pollen._ | Nightbeat holds up his flashlight and swishes his fingers through it; the flow of particles in the air is visible as it distorts. | _A heavy fall of pollen particles. We must be close._ |

| _We’re not affected._ | Rewind shifts his weight, rubbing his visor off again, rubbing the lens to the camera in his hands. His glance pulls up to Chromedome, magnetic and hopeful. | _Right?_ |

Chromedome shifts his weight. | _We shouldn’t be._ | That’s a hedge and Rewind doesn’t like it one bit. | _But it’s impossible to know for sure. An unknown nervous agent, even one evolved to act on organic species-- it_ might _still have an effect on mechanical species, if it were based on one or two elements. But we’re not showing personality changes, emotional arousal, disorientation, anything that would indicate serious chemical manipulation._ But--|

| _But we did crawl into the pollen-laced cave lair of our own volition and haven’t run back out screaming_.| Nightbeat is as blunt as always.

| _Yes_.|

| _This was our plan to begin with_.| Rewind manages to find some firmness in his tone. | _We know it’s here. It’s gotta be. We just need to get a glimpse of it, not a primetime interview_.|

| _I’m not saying we should turn back._ | Chromedome is either agreeing or conceding: Rewind is worried about which. | _We just don’t know what’s in here, and the heat-based camera settings might not even show much._ |

Rewind glances over to Nightbeat. He expected him to be more enthusiastic about the mystery and adventure of it all, but he’s staring at the ceiling, silent.

He’s about to reply, but the sound that shudders through the stone silences all three of them, dragging their gazes towards the pitch black of the deeper passages: a moan that reminds him of a ship being torn in two, but it isn’t metal. It sounds like wood. Like something moving in the dark.

They freeze, but only for a moment; Nightbeat breaks the spell of motionlessness over the three of them again, and whatever had preoccupied him a moment ago is gone now, as he hugs the wall further into the cave. The ceiling dips and rises in jagged angles, and Rewind is the only one who doesn’t have to duck as they creep forward. He’s not sure how far it goes on, with the slow pace, but despite the winding passageway it’s a straight shot-- the few shafts that twist off the main passageway are much too small to fit anything more than a couple meters tall. It doesn’t stop him from wondering what might be in there. Rewind is uncomfortably aware of the way the ceiling hangs above them, the solidity of the walls around them; he wonders how Chromedome and Nightbeat must feel. They’re awfully quiet over the comms, but he is too, he supposes-- there’s _suspense_ now, like violins building to a crescendo, or a needle pressing against a balloon.

And then the sound of footsteps stops.

| _Looks like it opens up_.| Rewind has to resist the urge to peek too far around the corner without the other two. Nerves or not, caution or not-- looking over the brink of the unknown, out on the near certainty of something _new_ \-- it’s tempting. He just wants to see it.

When he pulls his stare away from the darkness, Chromedome is looking at him. | _Pass me the extra camera._ | When Rewind tweaks his head, he continues: | _The ceiling’s too high for you to get a good shot_.|

Still, Rewind hesitates, but he passes it after a beat, with a dim flash of his visor and a touch to Chromedome’s hand. Nightbeat widens the beam on his light, shining it across the cavern: it’s large, and the pollen-fall is even thicker, crossing over the beam. The air doesn't seem to move at all despite that; there's an awful smell, like rot and flowers. Black roots cross the walls like cabling and wires, reaching down the rock; Rewind isn’t sure where they go, but they must reach down from above. His gaze flashes over the room. Chromedome steps forward, carefully and half-crouching, turning the camera over the room.

| _Do you see anything?_ |

| _This pollen, mostly. There’s some kind of mass of roots on the ceiling. I don’t--_ | Chromedome takes another step into the room, and then another-- about a fifth of the way in now, although admittedly it’s huge-- and there’s a muffled _crunch_. Rewind can see Chromedome's head drop to the floor along with the camera. There’s a vent of air and his fans click on, disruptive in the still, enclosed atmosphere of the cave. | _It’s_ bones _, the floor-- it’s just animal bones_.|

Chromedome is a fifth of the way into the room. He’s a fifth of the way into the room, and he’s staring at the ground and he’s taking a step back and Rewind sees it for the first time-- the root that moves, more like a vine slipping than anything but too deliberate and too fast, and before he can say something it’s circled Chromedome’s shoulder and half-hauled him off his feet.

Chromedome cries out in shock and that’s when Rewind finds his voice, too-- “Chromedome!”-- and the realizations churn through his processor: a mech his size must be too heavy or the thing would have lifted him, there’s more movement on the walls around them, _there’s something huge on the ceiling--_

It looks like a flower blooming upside down, the branches of the hideous tree that unfurl like petals from the cavern ceiling in the center of the cavern, above Chromedome as he’s dragged toward it with a deafening screech of metal against the stone. There’s a clanging sound, over and over, and as his headlamp and Nightbeat’s light flash shakily over the scene, Rewind realizes it’s Chromedome kicking. Or trying to.

It seems like it all happens in an instant. The flashlight rolls to the ground and his vision narrows to the his headlamp’s beam in the dark, the spark of metal on stone, the chaotic rolling shaft of the light-- Nightbeat fainted, he thinks, or maybe hit his head-- and Rewind snatches it off the ground, scrambles forward into the room. When he turns the light upward, hands shaking, Chromedome’s suspended, reversed, and the maw of the tree is convulsing like it’s gagging on one of his shoulders whole. There’s an awful sound of creaking of wood and metal, like both of them are warping, but nothing gives.

“Rewind!” Chromedome’s voice is hysterical, one half static and one half every frequency in his vocalizer at once. “You-- Get out! Get OUT!”

The room is spinning, full of noise and light and horror, the grinding noise of something evil’s teeth on Chromedome’s metal, but there’s a strange sort of calm that washes over Rewind suddenly. Well, he’s not leaving, so that’s decided. And if it can barely lift Chromedome-- the half of his torso that isn’t in the thing’s ‘jaws’ is partly on the ground-- then it almost definitely can’t chew him. It can barely even fit him in its mouth.

“Chromedome.” Rewind raises his voice. “Listen to me. Chromedome. You need to transform.”

“Rewind, GO, please--” Chromedome lurches with a kick, swinging his body and the dangling tree thing with a scrape of sparks against the stone he’s still dragging against. “Please, just--”

“I’m right here. When I distract it, transform and get over here. Okay? Chromedome?”

For a moment Rewind thinks Chromedome hadn’t heard him, thrashing against the… whatever. Finally: “Okay. Okay.”

The idea of taking his gaze off of Chromedome is about as appealing as hanging himself like tinsel from the piece of scrap-eating terror itself, but there aren’t a lot of options. He can see the camera where Chromedome dropped it a few meters into the room and it only takes a few kliks to dart forward and grab it. The exact emotion is untraceable-- fear, or anger, or just undefinable passion-- as he chucks the camera dead at the ugly tree. “Now!”

Chromedome doesn’t transform. Chromedome doesn’t do anything, unless you count continuing to hit the tree in the head. Oh, Rewind thinks, _sweet_ Allspark.

Rewind’s audials are fritzing from the shrieks of metal and stone, the groan of metal and wood straining against each other, all echoing against the hollow they’re trapped inside. There’s a whisper all around them-- the roots brushing against the walls, he thinks-- but Chromedome’s shouting has gone quiet. He’s grappling at it with his free arm, the one not pinned halfway inside the things ugly mouth.

“Are you okay?” Rewind calls, keeping the light trained on the center of the room, where Chromedome swings and twists like some piece of escher artwork, yanking at one of the larger roots attached to the main trunk.

There’s a long pause. “Yeah,” Chromedome says, the hysterical pitch of his voice quelling into surprise. “I don’t think-- It can’t swallow. Or digest. Or whatever it’s trying to do. Doesn’t feel too acidic or anything.”

 _Very_ dramatically, almost on cue, the monster (he doesn’t feel too bad about the judgmental label, not right now) gives a huge gag around Chromedome, rearranging him in the enormous gap in its wooden body. Rewind thinks the gleaming fluid dripping down over him must be sap.

“Yeah,” Rewind says. He keeps his voice calm. “Good. Great. Is your shoulder okay?”

“Had worse.” Chromedome yanks on the root again. There’s a ripping noise, like sinew, but the chunk of wood stays attached at the base. “How’s Nightbeat?”

“Mighta hit his head.”

“Yeah,” Chromedome says. “Well. We brought a first aid kit.” A joke. Ha ha.

“I still think if you transform, you might be able to get enough leverage to pull your shoulder out.”

Chromedome considers it for a beat, and then with what looks like immense effort, or at least spite, rips the damn thing’s root-arm-tentacle off its face.

The room starts churning, and there’s a screaming chorus of metal as the tree starts thrashing circles with Chromedome’s torso across the cave floor.

“OKAY,” Rewind yells, vocalizer pitching up with a note of urgency, “TRY MY IDEA NOW!”

Thank _Primus_ Chromedome hasn’t gone into shock or hit his head or just gotten too dizzy, because a few beats delayed or not, Rewind can hear his T-cog and pistons whir, see his body grinding in recombination against the straining wood. All he needs, Rewind thinks, listening to the popping and snapping of wood, is enough leverage to pull him out--

He’s not sure what gives way exactly, but all at once he hears yet another awful _crack_ and the confusingly, nostalgically reassuring clatter of Chromedome’s transformation sequence, and then there’s the stench of burned rubber and Chromedome is all but dragging him from the room. “Nightbeat,” Rewind yelps.

There’s nothing but flashing lights and sparks on rocks as they bump and scrape against the walls, scrambling through the half-darkness with the too-close noises of slithers and groans behind them, until they clear into the gray twilight once more.

The smell of moss is still nauseating, maybe because it’s still laced with the stink of the cavern, but when Chromedome drops against one of the only areas clear of roots, who knows how far from the cave, Rewind does too, face-first in the desaturated green. For a minute his head just spins, pressed into the plants and dirt, and then he scrambles up again, over to Chromedome. Nightbeat is half-sitting up, looking foggy. Chromedome looks like he fell through a wood processing plant. One tire was nearly torn-- no, chewed off. Half his body is either scraped from stone or scuffed from wood, just a mess of gray in unnatural streaks showing through where his warm clementine orange paint should be. Chromedome is missing most of the thick film of lavender pollen coating Nightbeat and the parts of himself that Rewind can see. Instead there’s a layer of sap in drippy ropes, with moss and dirt clinging to it. Ugh.

Chromedome is half-kneeling, half-sprawling on his hands in the dirt, with deep skid marks behind his knees, proof of velocity, of impact. Rewind crawls over and slumps against him. “Hey.” On a private channel, to the Lost Light: | _Rewind here. Emergency transmat uplink from my coordinates, three of us._ | “I’m here. You’re okay. We’re fine.”

Chromedome shifts, back onto his legs-- one of his arms is shaking, maybe more damage than he said-- and pulls Rewind against his stomach.

Nightbeat is humming close by, something looping, an old chorus; it’s almost automatic when Rewind starts scanning through old concert videos for the song. He waves. “Hey.” Nightbeat’s head ticks up. “Transport on the way. Should be soon.”

“I want,” Chromedome says, slowly, “a shower.”

Oh, there it is-- an old pre-war hit, hit the top of the charts not long after the first wave of cold-construction. No real surprise it’d be a favorite for Nightbeat, or Chromedome when he thinks about it. Rewind clicks it on over their comm channel and Nightbeat’s chin jerks up again from where it had sunk down, his mouth lit with a more characteristic smile. He’s still quiet except for humming along, fidgeting with quick hands.

A touch dramatically, Rewind sighs. “ _I_ want about a million shanix worth of video editing software.”

Chromedome laughs, quietly, and then he just keeps laughing. Rewind wraps his arms around his knees and lets his head fall against Chromedome’s chest, feeling the safe rhythm of his engine and his laughter.

**Author's Note:**

> (side note: Nightbeat had a real bad time underground on Gorlam Prime and I don't think that trauma is so easily dismissed so that is touched on in his characterization here thanks)


End file.
